The first of our featured articles, from the New Statesman gives the latest rumours on loans-for-peerages. According to Martin Bright:

"Cash for honours, loans for peerages, or just plain old-fashioned political shenanigans? Call it what you like, the Labour Party's ill-conceived scheme to raise a fighting-fund for last year's election campaign has already proved disastrous. Even before Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Yates of Scotland Yard presents his findings to the Crown Prosecution Service, the party is broke, its activists are demoralised and its future is uncertain."

That much we knew, I suppose. But the insider gossip is apparently that:

party officials now believe the loans scheme was dreamt up at a meeting attended by Blair and a tiny group of trusted loyalists: possibly just Levy; Jonathan Powell, the chief of staff at No 10; and the then party general secretary Matt Carter.

But the Labour National Executive is said to have been briefed at an early stage.

"Labour future" means Brown, of course (It is hard to see John Reid running a sufficient number of terrorism scares to find himself running the country.) The Telegraph reports that

Mr Brown's first 100 days will be modelled on New Labour's blitz of policy announced after Tony Blair was swept to power in 1997.

Plans include moves to strengthen the role of Parliament, to clean up party funding after the "loans for peerages" affair, to reduce the powers of political advisers and to outflank David Cameron on the environment.

As a sign of what is to come, it emerged yesterday that air travellers and owners of petrol-guzzling cars will be targeted for sharp tax rises in Mr Brown's Pre-Budget Report next month.

Separately, details emerged from a No10 policy document of a new contract between the state and citizen setting out what individuals must do in return for key services.

The big UK political story is the extension of the cash-for-peerages investigation. All the papers are running it - and it is going to run on for a while longer. Brown is not quite in the spotlight, but is out on the public stage. Here is the Guardian covering the Sky News report:

Police have contacted a "substantial" proportion of Tony Blair's past and present cabinet ministers over the loans-for-peerages scandal, it was claimed today.
Sky News reported that every member of the 2005 cabinet except the prime minister had received a letter about the claims.

"Every minister" includes Brwon of course. So his chances of appearing as Mr Clean after Blair has gone are reduced. Michael White breaks the bad news

why might a protracted controversy over details like that - or the Met's failure to make a case that the CPS and the Attorney General can sanction - matter to prime minister Brown? For the same reason that Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken's doomed libel suits against the Guardian mattered in the mid-90s to John Major whose ministers they had been. A background of scandal makes it harder to make a fresh start, even if Brown is free of this particular taint.

Quite who is tainted is an interesting question. The Guardian also quote a Conservative denial:

A Tory spokesman said no shadow ministers had been contacted by police, apart from the party's former leader, Michael Howard.

This is quite a small group of people. Always interesting when denials are so specific...